Puppy Love
by Eqgz
Summary: A cautionary tale: Be careful what you wish for. A prequel to Wild Card. It's not all grimness but if you need an unreservedly happy story you'd better skip this one. Brief appearances by a couple of canon characters.
1. Birth Pains

**--oOo--oOo--oOo--oOo--**

**Disclaimer:**

**Some characters herein are trademarked by Bandai and/or Toei. This work is derivative of season 3 of the Digimon television series (Digimon Tamers) and is in no way meant to imply ownership or infringe on any trademark or copyright.**

**--oOo--oOo--oOo--oOo--**

**Author's Notes:**

**BE WARNED: "Puppy Love" is an ironic title. This is a _tragedy_, not a romance!**

**Thanks to NKC for suggesting I tell this story. The more I thought about it the more it came alive for me until I just had to write it.**

**You don't need to read Wild Card first to understand this story but you should.**

**A picture of Coyomon (Rookie) can be found through the link on my bio page.**

**--oOo--oOo--oOo--oOo--**

Puppy Love

by Eqgz

--

Chapter 1

Birth Pains

--

I _really_ needed to stretch.

I pushed and felt resistance. I pushed again and something gave way, letting me move my arm a bit. I pushed and shoved and kicked more vigorously and bits of the hard material surrounding me fell away, leaving me blinking at the suddenly bright light and sprawled on a hard, flat surface.

I rested for a while and let my eyes adjust to the light. When the world came into focus I was a bit puzzled. I felt that things should look different somehow-- ghostly images of sand and red mesas flitted through my mind. I sat up and looked around the grimy buildings and littered asphalt in curiosity. Along with all the new sights, unfamiliar smells and sounds assaulted me, making it all so hard to sort out and understand.

I caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye and jumped to my feet, spinning around to see what had moved so close to me. Nothing was there. Then I saw it again, right behind me. This time I grabbed as I spun and found myself holding a bushy thing that seemed to be attached to my butt. My tail-- _of course!_ How could I be so dumb? I dropped my tail and stood staring at my hands, turning them over and watching them as I made my fingers move and clench.

There was a sudden loud noise as a door into one of the buildings banged open and a man came out carrying and can full of very smelly stuff. I watched in interest as he lifted the can and tipped its contents into a large rectangular metal container. Some of the smells were very nice.

As he lowered the can he saw me watching him and his impassive face turned into an angry scowl. He shouted angrily and grabbed something out of the container and threw it at me.

I knew what this was: An attack! I watched the thing tumble through the air-- it looked like the big can the man had been carrying but a lot smaller. I could have dodged it but I couldn't understand how such a little thing was supposed to hurt me so I jumped into a fighting stance and swatted it to one side with an open palm. My tail started waving back and forth all by itself: That had been _fun!_

The man gaped at me and leaned forward, squinting for a better look. I bared my fangs at him as I felt strange energies rising within me. _My turn!_

But the man didn't wait for my attack. He suddenly yelled, jumped back through the door and slammed it behind him. I didn't understand. Had I done something wrong? First he wanted to fight and then he didn't. It was very confusing.

Then I heard footsteps from around the corner and turned eagerly, my tail starting to wag again. Someone else was coming. Maybe _they_ would want to fight?

The person that turned the corner was much smaller than the man with the cans. He held a little plastic thing that projected a glowing semi-transparent disk with lots of moving symbols on it. He was looking at the disk so intently as he walked that he almost ran into me before he noticed I was there.

When he saw me he gasped and took two quick steps backwards. I felt just as surprised. This wasn't an opponent-- I knew that instinctively-- and if I hadn't known it, my frantically thrashing tail might have given me a clue. I knelt down to be on eye level with him and gave him a happy, open-mouthed grin.

"Coyomon?" he said in almost a gasp.

That was it! My name-- he knew my name! I groped for words and all I got was one that was wholly inadequate to express everything I was feeling right then.

"Hi!" I yipped happily.

He dropped the plastic thing and it dangled from his belt by a strap, the glowing disk vanishing. He reached out a hand tentatively and I lifted one of mine to meet it. We touched palms and curled our fingertips around in a grasp that felt proper to me. His eyes went wide and he said, "You're real! You're really here!"

I didn't understand. How could I _not_ be real? But I was too happy to ask questions so I just said, "Yep yep! I'm Coyomon. I'm real!" I was really getting the hang of this talking thing.

The little person-- no, _boy_ was the right word-- the boy threw his arms around my neck and hugged me tightly. I was so happy. This was better than fighting.

The door that the Can Man had gone through slammed open again and this time three men came out. Can Man started shouting, "There it is! That's the thing!"

"Hey," yelled one of the others, "what's it doing to that kid?" He picked up a board from the pile of rubbish by the door and began to advance on us.

The boy jumped away from me and stared at the men, trying to stammer out something but I didn't need to be told what to do. _Three opponents at once? What fun!_

"Yipee!" I yelled joyfully as I leapt at Board Man, kicking aside his weapon and giving him a punch that doubled him over. Can Man fled back into the building. Couldn't he make up his mind whether or not he wanted to fight? The last man had a big chopping cleaver in his hand that still had bits of green onion sticking to it and he threw it at my head. I didn't even have to dodge-- Mr. Cleaver's aim was terrible. I caught the cleaver by the handle as it went by me and then grabbed Mr. Cleaver by his shirt collar as he tried to follow Can Man back into the building. "Here," I said, handing him back the cleaver, "try again!"

"NO!" the boy yelled from behind me. "Coyomon, _stop_!"

I turned to face him in dismay. Had I done something wrong again? I wanted to please my new friend more than anything else I could imagine. "I'm sorry," I said, "wasn't I doing it right?"

Mr. Cleaver took the opportunity that my distraction provided to slam his weapon into my neck right where it joined my shoulder. It really stung. I quick stepped out of his range, still facing the boy. I could feel my inner energy healing my minor wound almost instantly. If that was the worst Mr. Cleaver could dish out, he'd _never_ be able to beat me.

"Tell me what to do!" I pleaded with the boy.

His advice was short and simple. "Run!" he yelled and sprinted off down the alleyway.

I jogged alongside him as he ran. "I could have easily beaten them all," I reassured him.

"It's-- not-- that!" he panted, "You're not-- supposed to-- fight-- _people_!"

"Oh. I'm sorry, I didn't know. But--" I added, "_they_ attacked _me_! Maybe we should go back and explain the rules to them?"

"No--" he gasped, "no, I don't think-- that would be-- a good idea."

He squeezed through a gap in an old board fence and I hopped over it. We hid there in a narrow brick yard until we were sure nobody was following.

"I'll do better next time. I promise--" I stopped, realizing I didn't know the boy's name.

He gave me a brilliant grin. "My name's Danny."

"Danny." I said, enjoying the sound of it. "Danny, Danny, Danny!"

"Coyomon, Coyomon, Coyomon," he smiled back at me and we just sat there grinning like idiots for a few minutes.

"Oh man," Danny said eventually and the smile dropped from his face. "How am I going to get you home?"

I was confused again and my expression must have shown it.

"There are a jillion busy streets between here and the Watanabe's apartment," Danny told me. "Everybody would see you!"

"I don't mind." I told him.

"But they'd be afraid of you. Some of them might even attack you like those men did."

"You can just tell them the rules," I said.

"Ahh--" Danny sounded frustrated. "It doesn't work like that."

My ears drooped. I didn't want him to be unhappy but I was still confused. "Would it be okay if the other people _didn't_ see me? I really want to go with you."

"Well, yeah-- but how am I going to hide a six-foot talking coyote from crowds of people?"

I brightened up. "Oh, I can do _that_!" I said, and jinked a bit out of phase with the world.

Danny's eyes went wide. "Coyomon?"

"Still right here." I told him and then phased back in.

"Wow!" he cried happily at seeing me reappear, "that's just like what Renamon does!"

"Who's Renamon?" I asked.

"Another digimon," Danny told me. "She's-- well-- oh boy, this is going to be hard to explain."

"Can I fight _her_?"

"Um--," Danny frowned, "no-- I don't even know if she's real like you are. But she's really, really tough."

"Good!" I said and bounced up and down a bit in eagerness. "Those men were _way_ too weak and slow for a good fight! Can we go find Renamon now?"

"No, Coyomon!" Danny said. "I have to go home now."

"Oh," I said, a bit disappointed, "but I get to come with you, right?"

"Oh yeah," he said, "as long as you stay invisible until we get there."

"Yay!"

--


	2. Learning the Ropes

--

Chapter 2

Learning the Ropes

--

Danny was very patient with me. I knew he got frustrated at times when I didn't understand something that was obvious or simple to him but he never got mad at me. He'd just try to explain it another way.

I followed him wherever he went, mostly out of phase, but often perched somewhere out of sight in normal space. One of the first things I learned about people was that they almost never looked _up_. I got in the habit of carrying Danny up to high places to have private places to talk.

One of the first things he tried to explain to me was where I'd come from. We were sitting on the wide, flat roof of his school, high above the noise of the other children playing at recess. He showed me his sketchbook that contained lots of drawings of various digimon. There were a lot of the one he called Renamon-- she had been his favorite. There was one really funny one where she had a Patamon sitting on her head like he was a hat. The rest of the drawings were of me. Danny said he had wanted to design his own digimon, sort of like Renamon, but based on the trickster legends of his own home. That was because he didn't come from Japan. He was from some place called Arizona and was an 'exchange student'. I didn't know what that meant but I didn't want to interrupt him so I just listened.

"Then, the day after I did this last drawing with all the stats listed beside it, I found a blue card and this digivice on my desk." Danny held it up for me to see. "After I swiped the card, it showed your digi-egg on the screen and I figured out how to use the information display to track you down. The display said you'd hatched just before I found you."

"So, _you_ made me?" I asked. "Thank you, Danny! It's a lot of fun being real."

He shrugged. "I don't know about that. You might as well thank Nicola Tesla for inventing AC electricity or the guy who invented computers-- I forget his name-- something like 'Cabbage'."

I was confused again. "But you're the one who drew what I was supposed to look like and put down all these 'stats'. What's this one?" I asked, looking closer and tapping the sketchbook page with a claw tip.

"Oh, that," Danny said, "That's really not a statistic, that's something I just thought it would be cool for you to be able to do. Sort of like a magical bag of tricks."

"'Small dimensional portal inside vest-- can carry all sorts of stuff in it.'" I read off the page. Funny-- I'd never thought to look inside my vest. I lifted the left side of the buckskin and, sure enough, there was a small area that sparkled with black and white pixels. I reached though it and felt around.

"Holy cow!" Danny cried. "It's really there!"

"Well, of course it is-- you wrote it down, didn't you?" I pulled my hand back out. "There doesn't seem to be much in there." I dumped the small handful of red sand I'd grabbed onto the roof. "I'm going to try to get a look," I said and pulled the side of my vest around as far as it would go, twisted my head nearly into my armpit, and shoved my head through the portal.

I saw a red desert that looked familiar somehow. Right by my head was a small natural shelf high up the side of a sandstone mesa. There were marks where my fingers had scooped up some of the sand covering its flat bottom. I turned my head as far as I was able. Evidently this side of the portal couldn't move at all. I could just barely glimpse some creatures moving across the desert in the distance. Suddenly I quivered with excitement: Those distant figures were other digimon! I would have watched longer but I could feel Danny tugging urgently at my arm, so I pulled and twisted my head back out of the portal.

"--oyomon, please!" Danny was saying. I hadn't been able to hear him from the other side. "Oh, man! That looked so _wrong_!"

"Digimon!" I said happily, "there were digimon in there!" I pulled at my vest trying to stretch it-- trying to make the portal bigger-- but it resisted all my efforts.

"What are you doing?" Danny frowned at me.

"It's too small," I explained. "If I can make it bigger, we can go there and fight those digimon!"

"Wait, wait--" Danny said, pulling my hands away from my vest. "That portal is part of you-- I'm pretty sure you couldn't go through it without turning yourself inside out or something-- even if you _could _make it big enough."

"Oh," I said, my ears drooping. "It's just that those are the first other real digimon I've seen and--"

"And the first thing you think to do is go beat them up?"

"Yes!" I yipped happily.

Danny sighed and shook his head. "You're _always_ talking about fighting."

I was confused and unhappy again. I'd upset Danny and I didn't even know why. "Isn't that what I'm supposed to do? Win fights for you?" I turned to the open sketchbook again. "You wrote it down here-- my special attacks, Fang Flurry and--"

"Yes, I know!" Danny said angrily as he grabbed the book and turned away from me. "Every digimon is _supposed _to have specials and fighting stats-- but that's just the _game. _You're _real _and you're my friend and--" he hesitated for a moment and then continued, "I don't _like _fighting for real."

I was more confused than ever. "You don't have to fight anyone, Danny. I'll do it for you!"

"Will you _shut up_ about fighting!" he yelled angrily at me.

He'd never done that before. I felt miserable. I only wanted to make him happy-- I wanted to make him proud of me-- and there was only one way I could think to do that. It was what I was _made_ for-- and it was the one thing he didn't _want_ me to do.

"I-- I'm sorry, Danny." I whimpered.

He turned back to me and I could see that there were tears in his eyes. He started to say something when the access door to the roof burst open and the school custodian came marching out.

"Who's up here?" he demanded angrily, looking around. "No students are allowed on the roof!"

I'd had plenty of practice hiding from people and I reacted instantly and instinctively. I grabbed Danny and phased out. Danny went rigid in the crook of my arm and he gasped in alarm.

"Don't worry Danny," I whispered in his ear, "he can't see us now."

Danny clutched my arm with all his strength and stuttered, "I-- I-- I can see-- _through_ stuff!"

"Huh? Oh yeah-- well that's what it's like being out of sync with the world." I hadn't really thought about it before. The semi-transparent landscape that glowed a soft blue seemed perfectly natural to me.

The custodian walked around the roof, peering behind ventilators. I could see his heart was pumping a bit fast and the pulses of energy flowing through him were a distinct shade of red.

"What's that sparkly stuff?" Danny asked. He seemed to be calming down a bit, his own energy loosing the yellow tinge of alarm.

"Energy," I told him, "The bright blue-white stuff over there--" I pointed to an air conditioning unit, "--is electricity. The softer glow in that guy is bio-energy. The reddish color means he's a bit angry-- see how the aura around him is kind of ragged? Not a very calm guy at the best of times."

"Wow," Danny breathed.

"Yeah-- it's kind of pretty," I said as I glanced down through the roof, looking for other types of energy. "That yellow glow is a laptop battery and those greenish-blue wisps are water energy. It's much brighter when the water is clean and free-flowing."

"Ick!" Danny said. "That's a toilet!"

Danny turned his head away but I kept looking. "You humans sure do some weird stuff."

"Who's there?" the custodian demanded angrily. We hadn't been talking as quietly as we should have.

My first thought was to jump off the roof and let Danny get back to his class but then another idea leaped to mind.

"You have angered the spirits!" I said in a loud, somber voice.

"What?" the custodian frowned. "You come out of there! I can see where you're hiding."

Danny stifled a giggle.

"Keep hold of my tail," I whispered to Danny as I set him down behind me. I walked closer to the custodian and said, from about arm's length in front of him, "The spirits demand atonement!"

The man's aura went yellow at the edges. Now, even with his pitiful little human ears, he could tell that my voice was coming from seemingly empty air.

"Wha-- wha--" he gasped.

"Tonight you must go do something nice for the person you dislike most and then put your underpants on your head and drink bad sake until you barf." I crossed my arms over my chest, lowered my head, put on my best threatening glower, and phased into visibility. "_OR ELSE_!"

"EEEeeeeaaaghhhh!" the custodian screamed and bolted for the door. He bashed his shoulder against the doorframe and half-ran, half-fell down the stairs.

Danny was laughing his head off! I felt wonderful. I had found a way to make him happy that didn't involve fighting.

--

A few days later I found out something else that made Danny happy. He didn't much like Japanese pastries but places that sold American-style doughnuts weren't common and there weren't any near his school or his host's apartment building, so I'd go out every morning and get a few for him to eat on the way to school. I learned to put a paper box in my vest portal to keep sand off of the pastries.

"Thanks, Coyomon," he said as he accepted the cinnamon roll I handed to him. "Now if you could only find a place that sold fry bread, I'd be in heaven!"

"Fried bread?" I asked. "That doesn't sound very good."

"No, _fry_ bread," he corrected me, "It's-- it's like-- well, it's really _good_. We'll get some when I go back to Arizona at the end of the school year." He stopped walking suddenly and looked up at me. "You-- you'll come back with me won't you?"

"Of course, Danny!" I smiled at him. "We'll _always_ be together."

Here's a clue: If you don't want life to make a liar out of you, don't make promises you can't keep.


	3. Attitude Adjustment

--

Chapter 3

Attitude Adjustment

--

My first fight was on a Friday afternoon after school. Danny and I were sitting on the roof of a Yaohan supermarket that had a good view of the park. He was going with his host family to visit their relatives somewhere in the country that weekend and we were trying to decide what I would be doing.

"I can run as fast as they can drive," I told Danny. "I'll just follow you."

"But I think it's a long ways," he said. "Won't you get tired?"

I shrugged. "If I do, I'll just rest for a while. I can find you easily enough-- just activate your digivice."

Danny pulled the digivice out of his backpack and looked at it. He hadn't used it since the day we met. He pressed a button and it beeped and the screen flashed.

"Yeah," I said, "like that! I can feel it-- I know right where you are."

"I'm right _here_," Danny grinned.

"You know what I mean!"

"Yeah-- but are you sure it will work from a distance?"

"Well--" I thought for a second, "why don't we try it out? Hide-and-Seek in the park! You find a real good place to hide and then activate your digivice and see if I can find you."

We did it a few times and I always found Danny a few seconds after he'd pressed the button.

"See?" I said. "No problem! You just--" The digivice lit up and started beeping.

"Hey," Danny said, "I didn't touch anything."

I felt a wave of energy pass through me. It was phase energy but not like anything I'd felt before. I turned toward the source and saw a cloud of strange fog hovering over a construction site a few blocks away.

"Coyomon?" Danny said uncertainly.

"It's another digimon," I said, "I'm sure of it."

Danny stuffed his digivice back into his pack and turned to go farther into the park-- away from the strange fogbank. "Let's go."

"But--"

"Come on, Coyomon," he said sharply.

It was so hard to turn away. I was trembling with eagerness and my lips had wrinkled back to expose my fangs. I wanted to fight so badly!

"_Coyomon_!"

I turned and followed Danny even though it made me ache inside. We might as well have stayed put; the other digimon could sense me as well and was just as eager for a fight-- and it didn't have a tamer to hold it back. A minute or so later, the bright red bug dropped down in front of us, blocking our path. I instinctively dropped into a fighting crouch.

"No!" Danny said to the bug digimon. "We don't want to fight!"

"Too bad," it said, "_I_ do!" and it leaped at me.

Danny was yelling something but I was too busy to pay attention. Okay-- I didn't really _want_ to listen to him. I could have tried something to avoid the fight-- phase out or something-- but I didn't want to run away and so I ignored my partner-- my friend. It was the worst mistake of my life.

The bug's special attack caught me by surprise. Danny could have pulled up the thing's stats on his digivice and given me some warning but he just stood there frozen, with his fists clenched. The ball of electricity the thing launched burned me pretty good and took away a lot of my energy. It also made me mad. I drove in on the little insect with a storm of punches and kicks, knocking it around a lot but not doing too much damage. Its hard carapace was pretty good protection and I had to be careful to dodge its sharp claws and mandibles.

I dodged its second blast of electricity and decided to try one of my own specials. I leaped forward and slammed my paw down on the ground in front of the bug as I unleashed the energy of my Earth Splitter. The paving stones of the path instantly split in a jagged crack that raced under the bug and erupted upward in sharp fragments of rock. Just as I'd thought, the bug's chitin was much thinner on his underbelly and it took a lot of damage from the blast. I didn't give it a chance to recover but leaped forward and kicked it over onto its back so that I could slam a series of fast knife-hand attacks into its already damaged belly. At my fourth strike it fragmented into disassociated bits of data and I caught the burst of energy right in the face.

It was wonderful! All my wounds vanished in an instant and I felt new strength flooding into me. I did a couple of back flips out of sheer joy.

"I won, I won!" I cried, "Danny, I won!"

But Danny was gone.

I leaped into a treetop and scanned the park. There he was, running beside the pond. I phased out and followed him. His aura was ragged and tinged with yellow and red. I followed him all the way home and only phased in again when we were alone together in his room.

"Danny?"

"_Go away_!" he said sharply and turned face down on his futon.

I phased out again and stayed there, watching him, until finally his aura settled into the deep blue of dreamless sleep.

--

Danny left his digivice behind when he went away with the Watanabes that weekend. I'd never been alone for so long before and I didn't know what to do with myself. After walking around the apartment building dozens of times and looking at the clock on the bank building every three minutes, I knew I had to do something to distract myself.

I explored the city and watched people as they went about their business. I learned some interesting stuff. One thing I learned was that people generally didn't like finding a big two-legged coyote perched on their balconies. Another was that most people saw pretty much what they expected or wanted to see. I got mistaken for a person in a costume more than once even though the differences should have been unbelievably apparent to anybody who wasn't blind or an idiot.

I experimented by showing myself to a number of people around the city. Strangely enough, it was almost always the children who immediately accepted me for what I was. Sometimes they were wary but none of them ever showed the outright fear that a lot of adults did.

There _was_ one ancient old guy in the park who was practicing Tai Chi who didn't even blink an eye when I phased in. He calmly finished his routine and then bowed to me, saying, "Good morning, kitsune-san."

I bowed back. "Good morning, old guy." I don't think I looked much like a traditional kitsune, what with my fringed buckskin vest and the eagle feathers tucked behind one ear, but with my big ears and pointy snoot, it was an obvious assumption to make. "I like your style," I told him and reached into my vest, "Have a doughnut."

He took it gingerly between thumb and forefinger and thanked me politely.

"Oh yeah," I said, remembering what he had looked like when I was out of phase, "there's a spot of bad energy right there," I pointed to a place just below his ribs, "you should get that taken care of before it spreads. See ya."

--

I don't need to sleep much, just an hour or so each day, so it wasn't much trouble to stay up through the night. The thought of curling up beside Danny's empty futon made me uneasy. I guess I thought if I didn't go home I could pretend he was there-- or something.

That night was when I had my second fight-- and nearly died while finding out what my weakness was. Every digimon has a weakness to a particular type of attack, it seems, but I didn't know that then. I sure found out in a hurry.

The digimon looked like a scorpion mixed with a Swiss Army knife and it bio-emerged only a few blocks from the construction site where the red bug had come through.

I was running flat out toward it before I even had a chance to think about what I was doing. But Danny wasn't there-- and he couldn't be upset about something he didn't know about, right?

I skidded to a stop in front of the scorpion and gave it a good looking-over. It had big claws and scissor-like blades running along its sides. "Heya, Mr. Snippy! Looking for a fight?" I had overlooked its most important weapon.

"I'm looking for a _meal_," it hissed at me, "and you'll do nicely."

Since all of Mr. Snippy's pointy bits seemed to be along its front and sides, I thought it would be best to hit it from above. I leaped up, adding a full twist out of sheer exuberance and slammed both paws onto its back, digging in my claws as far as they would go. It screamed and nailed me in the shoulder with the little barb on the end of its tail.

_What a useless weapon_, I thought, _it hardly_-- Then the venom hit me.

I was in _agony_. All my energy seemed to desert me and I fell off the scorpion's back and stumbled clumsily away from it. It was a good thing I had seriously hurt it with my first attack or I would have died right then.

It dragged itself toward me and whipped its tail at my face while snapping at me with one of its metallic front claws. I just barely dodged the barb but the claw cut deeply into my leg and I fell to my knees. The tail barb whipped at my face again and I snapped at it in sheer desperation. I caught the tail in my teeth just behind the poisonous barb and clamped down with all the strength of my jaw muscles.

The scorpion screamed again and cut into me with its gleaming blades. I know I would have died then if it hadn't been for Danny.

The realization leapt into my mind. Danny would come home and find me gone. He'd never know what had happened to me and the only thing he would think was that I had deserted him. There was no way I was going to hurt him like that.

I thrashed my head violently from side to side, my fangs tearing through the thing's tail until the poisonous barb dangled uselessly. At the same time I dug the claws of my good hand into the scorpion's eyes and tore them from its head. I bit and clawed at it savagely and mindlessly as it desperately cut into my body until there was a hissing pop and a cloud of red particles surrounded me. I barely had enough strength left to draw in the scorpion's data.

--

Danny came home from his trip to find my note on his table and the treat I had made for him. He picked up the piece of greasy, burnt toast in puzzlement and then read the note.

_**Danny, I'm sorry for fighting.****  
I won't do it again.****  
I hope you like the fried bread.  
Your Friend,  
-Coyomon**_

He dropped the bread and grabbed his digivice out of the desk drawer but I phased in beside him before he had a chance to hit the button.

--


	4. Cheating

--

--

Chapter 4

Cheating

--

The next time Danny's digivice self-activated was when we were sitting in his room with all his digimon cards spread out on the floor. He was teaching me how to play the game-- which is kind of weird when you think about it.

We both froze when the beeping started up. Danny looked at the digivice and then at me. I reached over and grabbed the pillow off of his futon and dropped it on top of the little plastic instrument, muffling the noise. "Okay," I said, as nonchalantly as I could, "so what does this modify card do again?"

I was ready to phase out with Danny if a hostile digimon came crashing in but whatever had set off the detection alarm must have had better things to do and the beeping stopped after a minute or so. I tried to keep myself from trembling. I could sense the digimon disappearing beyond the edge of my perception and I felt almost panicky at the thought of it getting away but I sat there, calmly going over game rules and strategy with Danny, like I couldn't care less about having another fight.

--

That night, while Danny slept, I stood on the roof of the apartment building trying to sense the new digimon's location. I told myself it was to prevent it from being able to sneak up on us. I was getting pretty good at lying-- first to Danny and then to myself. It never showed up even though I stayed there all night.

I stood watch each night all that week and from there it was an easy step to go out actively looking for other digimon at night. 'Patrolling' I called it.

The first one I found was an easy kill. I hit it with a surprise Fang Flurry and it was so weakened it only took a few punches and kicks to finish it off. It had been too close to Danny's home, I told myself. It was a possible threat to him, I told myself. I was doing it for him, I told myself.

After a month or so of hunting and night fights I didn't even bother to make excuses anymore. I just reveled in the joy of fighting, the exaltation of victory, and the feeling of power as I downloaded my defeated opponents. I got stronger and more confident with each victory.

And all the while, Danny had no idea what I was doing. He had a couple of friends at school that he hung around with sometimes and he made a real effort to improve his Japanese and take part in some school activities but most of the other kids weren't very friendly with him. The Watanabe's son didn't like Danny at all and that made things awkward at home. Because Danny's last name (Kanetewa) sounded sort of like a Japanese one, I think the dumb-ass kid had expected Danny to be of Japanese descent even thought he'd been told that Danny was half Hopi, half anglo.

So Danny and I spent a lot of time together during the day. We played in the park after school and on the weekends. I'd hang around with him when he was doing his homework in the evening and I actually learned some interesting stuff. Not very _useful_ stuff but interesting anyway. We played some pranks on a few deserving jerks and that was always fun. I liked being with Danny and we got on great together-- as long as the subject of fighting didn't come up.

I was careful to evaluate each opponent I approached before attacking. If they looked like they might have a serious venom attack or might be way above my level, I avoided fighting them no matter how badly I wanted to. But even so, all through the winter I only had to run out on three fights. The only times I ever felt unhappy were when I was retuning home after a wonderful fight, feeling flushed with strength and satisfaction, and felt the urge to tell Danny all about it. I knew I didn't dare. The two things I valued most in life, my partner and my fighting skill, I had to keep completely separate from each other.

When I bothered to think about it, I told myself that I could keep the deception up indefinitely or that Danny would eventually come around and accept that I was a creature _made_ for fighting.

_Wouldn't it be wonderful_, I thought, _to have Danny by my side, slashing modify cards-- giving me more abilities-- maybe even making me digivolve! Someday he will-- I'm sure of it. _

If you don't know the Native American legends about Coyote, you may not know that one of the most obvious characteristics of that trickster god is his ability to fool _himself_. Danny had certainly made me into a faithful shadow of those stories.

I approached the subject of fighting a few times and Danny always avoided it until, one spring evening in the park I got impatient and asked him directly.

"_Why_ don't you want me to fight?" I demanded. "I'm strong and quick and skillful and you're so good at the game that I _couldn't_ lose if I had your help!"

He looked down at the ground and was silent for so long I thought he wasn't going to answer but then he sighed and said very quietly, "My brother won just about every fight he ever got into."

I was completely confused. "That's-- good-- isn't it?"

"No." He looked up at me and there were tears in his eyes. "No, it's not."

"Danny, I'm sorry-- please don't cry!" There I was-- someone who could climb a skyscraper in about five seconds flat, walk through normal matter like it was fog, and punch holes in concrete walls-- and I felt _totally_ helpless. "I don't want to make you unhappy but I want to _understand_!"

He sniffled and wiped at his eyes. "Okay-- tell me something."

"Sure, Danny."

"There have been other digimon around. I hear the alarm go off on my digivice sometimes even though it's stuffed in the drawer with a t-shirt wrapped around it. You've felt those digimon, right? Maybe even more than I know about."

_Uh-oh_, I thought and nodded cautiously.

"Well, have you ever wanted to meet one of them?"

"Of course I have. That's what I'm--"

"No!" cried Danny suddenly. "Not _fight_ them, _meet_ them! Talk to them-- get to know them-- ask them about where they come from-- maybe-- maybe even make friends with one of them?"

I stood there like an idiot with my mouth open. _You asked for this_, I told myself, _be honest with him for once, you jerk._ "Uh-- no-- no, I never really thought of that."

"Yeah--" he said with his mouth set in a grim line, "neither did my brother. He looked at everyone else as someone to fight. He got drunk all the time and hit everybody around him-- other guys he didn't even know, his girlfriend, me, my mom-- _everybody_-- and one night behind a bar in Flagstaff he beat up a friend so bad that the guy couldn't walk anymore and the cops took him away and they put him in prison and I was _glad_ because I wouldn't have to watch him hurting people any more and he wouldn't hit me or mom again and-- and--" Danny stopped. Tears were streaming down his face and he was gasping for breath.

I held him in my arms while he cried and dug his small fingers into my ruff. I stroked his head and made comforting noises for a while and then I said, "It's different for digimon. I would _never_ hit you, Danny-- or any other real person. That first day I was stupid and I didn't know the rules--"

"What?" He lifted his head from my chest and wiped an arm across his nose. "What do you mean 'real person'?"

"A human being, silly. Not a digimon like me."

"But you _are_ real!" he protested.

This was something I'd puzzled over for a long time. I'd swiped books out of the school library and tried to make some sense out of what they said about being human. I'd thought long and hard about how a card game for children could define my very existence.

I shook my head. "No, Danny, I'm not. Not the way _you_ are. Not even like a cat or dog. I'm-- like a car or a plane. I was _made_." I phased us out of sync with the world and everything went blue. "Look at me. I have something _like_ muscles, bones and skin that make me look like a living being from the outside, and few other simple things inside, but I don't have all that other biological stuff-- just patterns of energy." I shifted a few degrees and the world became solid again. "At best, I'm a kind of complicated robot-- and I'm _programmed_ to fight other robots-- other digimon like me."

"No! You _are_ a person!" Danny insisted. "A computer or a robot has to do what it's told to do but _you_ can make choices. You can _choose_ not to fight."

I hung my head shamefully. "I lied to you Danny. I _have_ been fighting. At night and sometimes when you were in school. I just can't help myself."

Danny gazed up at me silently for a long time and then he said in a calm voice, "Hit me."

"_What_?"

He squirmed out of my arms and took a step back. "Hit me, you stupid coyote. C'mon-- a good hard punch in the face."

"I-- I-- I-- can't do that Danny!" I gasped in horror.

"Why not? You're programmed to fight and you're just a stupid robot, so why can't you do what you're told?"

"Danny--"

"WHY NOT?" he yelled at me.

"You-- you're my tamer-- my partner."

"Yeah, and your tamer is _ordering_ you to sock him in the face, so why don't you_ do it?_"

"I don't want to hurt you-- you're my friend and I love you!"

"What kind of robot talks about _love_?" he demanded.

"I-- I mean--" My head was spinning. "I don't know--"

"You're just making up excuses because you _want_ to fight. My brother used to say the same stupid things." Danny glared at me. "Okay, so he never came up with the 'robot' crap, but all his excuses were just as lame."

I groaned and plopped down on the ground. "I wasn't lying to you about that, Danny. I thought I had it figured out. Why else do I know all those fighting moves without ever having learned them? There must be some _reason_ why I'm like this, right?"

Danny sat down next to me. "I don't know. I just know I don't like it when you fight."

"Okay--" I said slowly, a plan forming in my mind, "--the next time a digimon comes around, I'll go talk to it. Try to make friends with it, okay?"

Danny looked up at me. "Really?"

"Yeah," I said, "really."

"But if it's not a nice one-- if it wants to fight-- you'll run away?"

I grimaced. "Yeah-- I guess."

"No," Danny said sternly, "you _promise_ me you won't fight it!"

"Okay," I sighed, "I promise."

--


	5. Then the Day Came

**--oOo--oOo--oOo--oOo--**

**Author's Note:**

**I apologize in advance. The final event in this chapter was mentioned briefly in Wild Card but I never thought I'd have to dwell on it. It hurt to write about it in such detail. I don't imagine it will be pleasant to read. **

**Not the last chapter.**

**--oOo--oOo--oOo--oOo--**

--

Chapter 5

Then the Day Came…

--

In the next week I had to run from three digimon I could have easily beaten. It nearly drove me nuts but I wasn't going to break a direct promise to Danny. Well-- not _again_, anyway. Yeah, the evil little lawyer in me kept reminding me that I'd only said "the next time" but I was going to give this hare-brained idea my best effort-- three more digimon at least.

The fourth one broke my losing streak-- sort of. It was a Gazimon. I recognized it from the card game. I'd forgotten its special attacks but I knew that it didn't have any venom-- _that_, I'd remember. It knew I was around somewhere and was being very cautious.

"Hey," I said from my perch on a light pole, "you made it to the real world. Congratulations!"

Gazimon leaped backwards and crouched defensively. _So slow_, I thought, _I could easily_-- but I clamped down on that thought. "Hey, now," I said lazily, "I don't want to fight. There's plenty of fun to go around for everybody here. Have a snack!" I lobbed a glazed doughnut in Gazimon's direction-- slow and aimed to miss. He still jumped back from the pastry and then sidled back over to where it had landed on the pavement, never taking his eyes off me.

"Smells good," he growled suspiciously.

"Oh yeah," I agreed, pulling another one out of my vest and taking a big bite out of it, "tastes even better. There's all sorts of cool stuff like that in this world."

Gazimon pounced on the doughnut and gobbled it down in a single gulp. He looked astonished and licked at his fingers. "That's good!" He looked up at me, still wary. "Got anymore?"

"Sure," I said and dropped him another one. It vanished almost as quickly. I hopped down from the light pole and stretched, purposely tuning my back on him. I could see him in the reflection of a car's windscreen as he lunged, taking a vicious swipe at my back, just as I'd expected him to. I spun aside and kicked him in the back of his head as he went stumbling past me, his long claws missing me by a wide margin. I wasn't breaking my promise: It wasn't fighting-- it was _education_.

"Quit goofing around," I told Gazimon calmly. "Don't you want to go take a look at the city?"

Gazimon stood up, rubbing the back of his head and glaring at me. But he'd gotten the message.

We walked around the darker streets of the neighborhood and I gave him a bit of information about how the human world worked. Not that he seemed interested. But when I asked him about where he'd come from I got a flood of information about the Digital Dimension. Most of it was in the form of bragging and self-aggrandizement but there was still a lot of good information in what Gazimon told me.

It seemed to be going pretty well until a young couple walked around the corner of the street and approached us. I stepped back into shadow but Gazimon grinned and crouched down facing the still unaware couple.

"What are you doing?" I hissed at him.

"Gonna have some fun!" he growled back, loudly enough for the couple to hear him. They looked up and the girl screamed at the sight of the leering creature. Gazimon leaped for them and did a hard face-plant on the sidewalk when I grabbed his tail and yanked.

"Ow!" he yelled and scrambled to his feet. "What the heck did you do that for? They got away!"

"They're _people_, you idiot," I snarled at him, "you can't attack people! It's against the rules!"

He stared at me like I'd grown a second head. "_Rules_? What are you--" And then it dawned on him. "Flaming heck! You're a Tainted One!"

"Huh?" It was my turn to be confused.

"You got a tamer!" he looked like he was going to laugh.

"Well-- yeah-- so what?"

His answer was a blast of electricity he shot from his mouth. It didn't hurt much but I suddenly felt like I was encased in concrete. Gazimon bared his teeth in a nasty grin and wound up for a slash at my throat-- one that I didn't think I'd be able to dodge. So I did the next best thing, I phased out. Gazimon's claws whipped through me and I felt them much more that I should have: I'd just barely made it a fraction of a degree out of sync.

"What?" he gasped and then spun around, trying to discover where I'd gone.

I struggled slowly away as the effects of his paralyzing attack started to wear off.

"I can still sense you, you domesticated dummy!" Gazimon yelled in my general direction.

I didn't reply and Gazimon hesitated, probably trying to decide whether he wanted to fight a digimon who could vanish into thin air. He dithered a little too long. I phased in to one side of him, the energy for a Fang Flurry built up in my hands.

_Damnit_! I mentally smacked myself and only just turned the attack aside at the last instant. The whirling red particles tore into a parked car and shredded it.

"Woah!" Gazimon yelled and leaped backwards.

"I missed on purpose, you know," I snarled at him. "Even a dull-witted slug like you ought to be able to see that."

He wasn't in the mood to listen and launched another one of his paralyzing attacks. Now that I was ready for it, I dodged it easily. He kept throwing attacks until I got frustrated and slammed him against a building with a series of spinning reverse kicks. _Still not fighting_, I told myself, _I'm just calming him down enough so he'll want to talk._

After he bounced between my flashing paws and the brick wall a dozen or so times, he got pretty calm. He cringed and squeezed his eyes shut as I bent over him where he sprawled on the concrete.

"Relax, I'm not going to delete you!" I told him.

He cracked one eye in my direction. "Why not?' he asked. "I'd delete _you_ if I got the chance."

"Look, I was hoping to make friends with you."

"Why?" he seemed genuinely puzzled. "You're not a Gazimon-- you're not even a Wild One-- you're a Tainted One and an enemy to all wild digimon. Why don't you go make friends with another slave like yourself?"

Now it was my turn to be shocked. Another tame digimon? I'd never met one. Not that I knew of, anyway.

Gazimon took advantage of my sudden distraction to rip into me with his long foreclaws. I instinctively kneed him in the head and as he fell back, I kicked him in the chest and then stood on his throat.

"You know something?" I gasped, holding one hand to my aching ribs. "I changed my mind-- I _am_ going to delete you."

--

I told the whole story to Danny-- even about downloading the Gazimon.

"I'm sorry, Danny," I said, as we sat on the roof of his apartment building, "but I really tried. He was just determined to be nasty. I think he really would have hurt those young people."

Danny just stared out over the city.

"Maybe there are other tamers out there with tame digimon like me." I said. "I could try to find one of them--"

"No," Danny interrupted me, "they'd be even more dangerous. Their tamers would _want_ them to fight and they'd have modify cards and--" he sighed and turned around to face me. "You're right, Coyomon. You _are_ made for fighting. The game was so much fun but-- I should never have wanted to make you real." He got up and walked to the roof access door and paused there for a long moment. "Go ahead and fight if you want to," he said, not looking at me, "I don't care anymore."

--

Danny wouldn't talk to me. Not even to tell me to go away. Whenever I appeared he'd just turn away from me. I felt ashamed but I couldn't stop following him around. I left some doughnuts on his desk but he threw them in the trash.

I was so desperate to make amends that I took his sketchbook one night and crossed out all of the stats beside the last drawing of me. I wrote, "Coyomon loves to play with his friend Danny and is good at all sorts of games but he doesn't like fighting at all."

Yeah-- it seems laughably stupid now-- but all the stats and specifications seemed like magic to me, so who knew what might work? It didn't, of course. The next time a Wild One showed up, my hackles went up and my whole body quivered with keen fighting instinct.

And I went and fought it. There didn't seem to be any reason not to. I couldn't escape my nature, it seemed.

--

Then the day came when Danny pressed the activate button on his digivice. I was headed in his direction anyway, having sensed the bio-emergence of an unusually large and powerful digimon.

I was puzzled. Danny was at school-- why would he have his digivice with him there? _Maybe he's changed his mind?_ I thought with a burst of desperate hope as I ran.

I heard the screaming before I saw the digimon. Students and teachers were running away from the dissipating fog of a digital field that hung over the school's parking lot. Danny had called me to protect him-- that had to be it!

The dragon-like digimon that was stomping cars into scrap metal was bug-gut green and damned big. I hit it with a Fang Flurry right off the bat. I wasn't going to mess around with something that powerful.

It was not only big but fast, too. It slapped me a good one with its tail and I went tumbling across the parking lot. It took in a huge breath and before I could dodge clear, it spit green fire at me. Pain flared all along my left side. I rolled to put out the flames while I worked up another Fang Flurry.

My attack ripped into its side and it roared and took another swipe at me with its tail. I managed to leap over it that time. My attacks must have been doing some good-- it seemed to be slowing down.

All the people had fled. Big green dragons were cool in the movies-- not so much in real life, I guess.

I made a long jump and got in a couple of solid kicks to its head but it figured out where I was going to land and sent its tail to meet me. The impact pinballed me between the parked cars and I flopped onto the sidewalk, aching and disoriented.

That's when Danny ran out to me.

"Coyomon!" He was holding his digivice and some cards, trying to slash one through the reader slot as he ran.

"Danny, get back!" I yelled at him, feeling the pavement shake under my feet as the dragon advanced on me. I found I had enough energy for another special, so I turned and unleashed an Earth Splitter that ripped into its underbelly as it leaped for me. My attack caused it to flip in the air and it only hooked a claw into my side instead of landing on me with both feet at it had intended. It crashed through a light pole and skidded across the sidewalk, ripping up the landscaping that bordered the parking lot as it thrashed wildly, trying to regain its feet. That must have been when it hit Danny. I didn't see it happen-- but I _felt_ it. It was like someone had crushed my head and shoulders in a vice-- an inexplicable, searing pain that was only with me for an instant.

I leaped for the dragon's exposed throat and kicked hard with both my paws simultaneously. The dragon gasped and snapped at me feebly. I hit it again and again, using all my remaining strength, until it shuddered and broke apart.

I fell forward onto my hands and knees, head hanging down with exhaustion. I pulled in as much of its data as I could, healing and reviving my battered body. When I finally raised my head I saw Danny's crumpled form lying near the shattered light pole.

"Danny?" I rose and took a few hesitant steps toward him and then stopped. "Danny? Danny, are you okay?" I ran to his side and turned him over. He rolled loosely, unresisting. "Danny? _Danny, please_!" I whimpered. He didn't move. I don't know what I was thinking but I picked up his digivice and tried to put it in his limp hand. It dropped out as soon as I let go of it. I tried to put it back again. "Please, Danny, please! I won't fight any more. I promise I won't. Danny, _Danny_-- _DANNY_!"

As I gathered Danny up in my arms, someone screamed behind me. Now that the dragon digimon was gone, people were coming out of the school buildings. I instinctively phased out.

And then I could see.

His heart lay still in his chest and the bright flow of his aura energy had broken into bits that flickered against my fur, fading into nothingness as I watched.

Danny was dead.

--


	6. The Way Forward

--

Chapter 6

The Way Forward

--

If it was obvious that I was made for fighting, it was _undeniable_ that I had been made for Danny. And now he was gone forever.

Not that I admitted that for quite some time. I took his digivice and cards, along with his sketchbook and a few other personal things before the Watanabes packed up his belongings to ship back to his mother. I did some truly stupid things out of desperation, like writing the best description of Danny that I could manage on the back of a photo of him and then slashing it through the reader slot on his digivice, over and over again-- but I couldn't even get the damn thing to turn _on_.

I don't know why I thought that an artificial lump of solidified data like me could possibly bring a complex and unique person like Danny back to life but I wasn't thinking very clearly at all in those first weeks after his death. Could even a human tamer have done it? I'm sure they couldn't. Maybe they could have created a digimon that looked like Danny-- but it make my hackles raise just thinking about _that_.

I stopped seeking out Wild Ones and only fought them when they bothered to hunt me down. But_ then_ I let every bit of my frustration and anger come out. Those fights were short ones.

I slept many hours each night even though I didn't need to-- at least until I started dreaming. That last, awful day played out over and over in dream after dream, of course, but those weren't the worst. No, the dreams that were unbearable were the ones where Danny was alive again. Whenever I woke to cold reality from a simple dream of playing or talking with Danny-- well-- I don't know why I didn't just break apart from sheer grief. Sometimes I wanted to-- just so I'd stop hurting.

When I got to the point where I was afraid to go to sleep, I stared hunting again. I didn't call it 'patrolling' or 'downloading' or any of the nicer euphemisms. I _hunted_ and _killed_ other digimon. I was willfully careless about it, not even bothering to size up my victims before I attacked. Usually, the savageness of my attacks got me a long way with the more powerful ones but, even so, there were several times I only won the fight by a hair's breadth. I wonder now if I didn't _want_ to lose, deep down inside.

The months went by and I found there were times when I wasn't hurting so bad. Something would distract me or I'd get interested is some weird thing people were doing and I'd forget to be miserable. Then I'd feel guilty for _not_ being miserable. Life would have been so much easier if digimon were designed to be turned off when they weren't fighting-- but that wouldn't really be 'life', would it?

--

Then came the day I met Weasel Boy. That wasn't his name, of course, but I never got around to asking it. I caught him curled up on a tree branch in the park, watching a bunch of kids playing football. He was a little guy but that doesn't mean much with digimon, so I was going to hit him with a full power Fang Flurry before he even knew I was there.

But I didn't.

He was so absorbed in the game that he didn't even sense my presence. He was smiling slightly, contentedly watching the boys run up and down the field. He seemed to be watching one boy in particular.

"Is he your tamer?" I asked from the shadows of the denser foliage behind him.

The little digimon nearly jumped out of his skin. He spun around and I could feel attack energy rising in him.

"Go ahead," I told him, leaning forward so that he could see me clearly, "I'll let you have the first shot."

He let his energy dissipate. "No-- I'm sorry," he said, "but you startled me."

I frowned in puzzlement. "Don't you _want_ to fight?" I sneered.

"If you like," he answered calmly, "but I'd rather watch the game."

I didn't know what to say. I couldn't attack him now-- I wasn't so far gone that I'd be _that_ much of a jerk. So I settled myself on the branch next to him.

"So, who's the boy you're watching?" I asked after a while.

"I don't know," the little weasel admitted, "but I-- I _like_ him. I was thinking-- maybe--"

"Maybe he'd make a good tamer?" I tried to keep my voice neutral.

"Yeah," Weasel Boy said, more than a little defensively, "what's wrong with that? You're not one of those idiots that goes on about 'Tainted Ones' are you?"

I barked out a short, bitter laugh. "Not _me_, pal."

"Good." He said and turned back to the game.

I got up, but couldn't leave until I'd had the last word. "Make sure he likes fighting-- real fighting and not just the pretend stuff. And--"

Weasel Boy looked up at me. "Yes?"

"Good luck."

--

After that I started getting better. Oh, I still had some bad days-- sometimes several in a row-- lots of nights spent screaming my way awake from nightmares-- but they got less and less frequent. I stopped indiscriminately attacking other digimon. Not many were as friendly as Weasel Boy but a lot of them weren't completely hostile and destructive. Those ones I let live. I even got to talk with a few of them for a little while. I took more time to explore the city and tried to learn more about how people lived. They still baffled the heck out of me most of the time. It was on one of those exploration trips that I met Guilmon.

He was holed up in a neglected stone structure built into a hillside in a park clear across the city from my usual territory. When I first saw him, he was sleeping curled around a bag of bread rolls. I wondered how he'd gotten hold of those. He certainly wasn't a stealthy type-- a squat little dragon with thickly muscled limbs built for smashing through walls, not sneaking around.

I was trying to decide if I wanted to bother waking the little red guy-- he was smiling in his sleep and that made me feel sort of weird inside-- when a boy came bouncing up the steps toward the rusty gate that closed off the front of the digimon's sleeping place. There was a digivice hanging from his belt.

"Guilmon! Wake up, boy!" the kid called out.

Guilmon woke and rushed over to the boy as he opened the gate. "Takatomon!" he cried happily.

I could only watch them for a few minutes and then I had to leave. I sat on top of a cell tower thought the night, trying to make some sense out of my emotions. I had felt happiness, jealousy, anger, and sadness all within the space of a few seconds while watching the two partners greet each other. Oh how I wished I really _was_ a robot then-- one with no feelings-- only cogs and gears inside.

I went back to the park the next day.

Guilmon was awake this time when Takato arrived. He was restless and sniffed the air occasionally. Takato noticed his disquiet and asked, "What's wrong, boy?"

"I think--" Guilmon said uncertainly, "--maybe there's another digimon around."

I was impressed. Usually, when I was wrapped in shadow, it took other digimon a concentrated effort to detect me. I had no idea what I was going to do when I let myself down from the tree limb and stepped out of the shadows-- maybe I just wanted to see what would happen.

Takato let out a "Whoah!" of surprise and Guilmon crouched and growled.

"Hi," I said.

Takato fumbled for his digivice and read off my stats. "Coyomon, Rookie, data type--"

"Does it say I like doughnuts?" I asked. "Those darned things _never_ get the details right."

Guilmon forgot to growl. "What are doh-nuts?" he asked.

--

He was my first digimon friend and always my best buddy. It was because of meeting him that day that I also met the love of my life and embarked on an incredible adventure--

But that's another story.

--

**--oOo--oOo--oOo--**

**Author's Notes:**

**If you've read all this and enjoyed it even a little bit, please leave a review, even if it's just one line.**

**(The rest is just blatant sentimentality. Feel free to skip it like a bad DVD commentary track.)**

**Time is the only thing that can heal the profound wound caused by the loss of a loved one. Inner strength helps you to endure that seemingly endless time-- but nothing helps as much a good and true friend.**

**To all the good and true friends I've been blessed with in my life: Thank you.**

**And thank **_**you**_** for reading.**

**--oOo--oOo--oOo--**

**eqgz-xjynrb-zglhmqo**

**--oOo--oOo--oOo--**


End file.
